Port of Tacoma

In addition, we'd be advocating for state partnership to replace the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge.

The bridge is an important connection for freight mobility, emergency response, and access, um, to the Port of Tacoma, the cities of Tacoma, Fife, and the Puyallup Tribe.

Um, in terms of the policy positions, as I mentioned earlier, that longer policy positions document, um, is included in your materials, and for time purposes, we won't go through the entire document today.

Um, but we would welcome any feedback or changes or additions, um, that you would like, uh, based on your direction.

The Build America Act, uh, the Build America two fifty Act was passed by the House this year.

It serves as a good marker for understanding some bipartisan policy positions heading into the new year, and it appears that the, the House at least centered in on a national registration fee as its preferred revenue solution to ensure solvency of the Highway Trust Fund moving forward.

In the meantime, we expect that the administration, uh, will continue its emphasis on utilizing infrastructure dollars to facilitate safety, goods movement to and from ports like the Port of Tacoma, family accessibility, and then beautification efforts.

Congress will also, at some point later on next year, turn its, uh, attention to the biennial Water Resources and Development Act.

who has worked with, who has worked on, who is now working with Maritime 253 in Tacoma.

This is, of course, the new Maritime Skills Center at the Port of Tacoma, which opened its doors to its first class of students on Tuesday, September 8th.

Maritime 253 is a partnership between Tacoma Public Schools and the Port of Tacoma and is built on 21 acres of port property.

Students will stay enrolled at their home schools, but then spend half their day at the port training in maritime technology.

manufacturing, logistics, vessel operations, so on and so forth.

Today, we are doing something a little different.

Remember our episode about tugboats? We talked about all the amazing jobs tugboats do around the Port of Tacoma.

But during that episode, we also mentioned one job that was pretty unusual.

A tugboat helped move the body of a giant whale.

And I should warn you, this story is a little sad, but it's also a story about scientists, ships, and what we can learn when something goes wrong.

Ready? Let's investigate.

Early in the morning on August 24th, 2026, a large ship arrived at the port of Tacoma, and there was something enormous on the front of it.

A whale.

Like, you know, those are sort of the easy button ones.

So our location in Tacoma, which is just adjacent to Seattle, we're a couple of minutes from Port of Tacoma, which is part of the Northwest Seaport Alliance, which is a partner with the Seattle, Port of Seattle Alliance.

You know, none of this stuff is surprising.

And yes, it is.